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Short Story - Was out of work in late 2018, ended up with some Charge Offs and Collections (4 Charge Offs/3 Collections). These will be falling off my reports between Sept - November of this year and I'm curious what impact I can expect to my scores? I'm currently in the 610-630 range with the biggest issue (other than the above) being high utilization. Thanks in advance!
My guess is you'll see a nice FICO score bump, probably at least 50 pts, when all of your derogatory accounts drop.
This is a recent post with similar results.
Just as in the other post that @pizzadude shared, as they start to come off, you'll see your scores start to come up some. You'll see the biggest gains once all adverse information is gone. As you probably already know, the high utilization is a different scoring metric. Depending on how high your UT is, it can have a significant negative impact on your scores.
If you want to share some more details about the number of revolving accounts and the UT % for each, other members could give a more specific idea of what's possible.
@thomasjm99 wrote:Short Story - Was out of work in late 2018, ended up with some Charge Offs and Collections (4 Charge Offs/3 Collections). These will be falling off my reports between Sept - November of this year and I'm curious what impact I can expect to my scores? I'm currently in the 610-630 range with the biggest issue (other than the above) being high utilization. Thanks in advance!
Two points:
1. High utilization hurts score FAR more on clean scorecards than dirty scorecards. So, get that utilization down before your last derog falls off.
2. As mentioned above, the big boost comes when the last derog falls/ages off.
The last derog falling off should bump your score at least 50 points from current levels. Not sure where your current utilization is sitting. If aggregate is above 29% utilization it is having a large impact on score Even above 9% AG UT is a significant negative. Pay down all cards reporting balances to under 29% and try to bring aggregate utilization to under 9%.
Adding on to the OP's question, are there two stages for a person with a BK? I'm guessing there is a noticeable increase from the derogs falling off at 7 years and then a bigger score increase after the BK falls off. I'll try for EEs at both points to speed things up.
I took a big paycut around 8-9 years ago and I eventually had around 6 accounts that went derog. I was able to pay some, others we couldn't. For several years, I didnt even pay attention to my score. I started focussing on rebuilding in Sep 2023. I was at around 620. By Sep 2024 I was at around 670. My final derog fell off of all three CRA's over the past three months. Going from one derog to zero did this for me: TU +95, EX +95, EQ+135, taking me to between 790 and 805
I stick with my Amex and Amazon Chase card. I pay everything off as I go. I only use the cards for the miles and cash back. For the past 18 months, it's been rare for me to be over 2-3% utilization at any given time. All that said, my credit report was in really good shape minus the last derog. I didnt get anywhere near those increases going from 3 to 2 derogs or 2 to 1. Only the final one
When those charge-offs and collections drop, you should see a nice lift, especially since they’re some of the heaviest negative factors on a report. The exact bump varies, but many people see a big improvement once their file is ‘cleaner.’ That said, your utilization will still play a major role; if that’s high, it can hold your score down even after the derogs are gone. If you can work on paying balances down while those accounts fall off, you could set yourself up for a really strong rebound by year’s end.